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> Money is a debt from society to its holder.

I disagree. Money is a store of value that is separate from society - gold is an international currency accepted organically because of its useful and intrinsic properties, with thousands of years of history in a wide variety of cultures that had no link before trade began.

There is no "debt" here. Society doesn't "owe" the holder of money anything, necessarily.




I think your confusion stems from the imperfect wording in the original phrase. What @karpierz meant (and his/her subsequent sentence supports it) is a) that society in this context implies government and b) that money is a legal tender that, upon tendering (i.e., offering as payment), discharges any debts (e.g., loans, purchases, taxes).

By the way, you're wrong in that money a) is only a store of value (it also functions as a medium of exchange and a unit of account) and b) is separate from society (in the modern world, in most countries, it is only government who has legal right to issue [primary] money).




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